The present invention relates to the manufacture of heat trace cable, the installation of a heat trace system, and the design and management thereof.
Heat trace systems are employed to heat and maintain pipes and/or materials carried by pipes at desired temperatures or within desired temperature ranges. Most industrial applications of heat tracing involve unique configurations and heating requirements. Applications for automated heat trace system design exist. Typically, such applications require that pipe system data be manually extracted from pipe system design files and entered into the application. Such manual extraction is error-prone and time-consuming. Moreover, in typical applications, the consistency of data used for calculating heat loss and selecting heat trace system components, generating isometric drawings of the heat trace system, and populating the border information on the drawings can not be easily validated.
Accordingly, a need therefore exists for improvement in the manufacture of heat trace cable, and the installation of heat trace systems. The present invention addresses these needs, among others.